Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/University of Washington Police Department

 This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was ambiguous.

I count 5 "delete" votes to 4 "keep" votes. In this case, I am forced to remember that, despite the name, "votes for deletion" is not about "voting" at all. We seek consensus and strive to base our decisions on evidence, logic, policy and precedent. In this case, I find myself most compelled by User:D. Wu's observation that all the encyclopedic content is a copy from the University of Washington article. (I can not convince myself that the list of police chiefs meets our recommended criteria for inclusion of biographies.)

I further note that similar VfD decisions on university police departments have been decided as "delete" decisions. While every article is unique and must be judged on its own merits, we should consider precedent. The argument that "any police department is automatically notable" is not one that has been supported by the community previously.

Given that the content is still discussed in another article (and that the other article appears to be the parent, therefore there is no requirement to preserve attribution history in order to comply with GFDL), I am going to exercise my discretion on this one and call it as a "delete" decision. Rossami (talk) 23:58, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

University of Washington Police Department
In the same vein, I am also nominating this article because of non-notability. Any information contained here (with exception of the list of police chiefs) is already duplicated in the University of Washington article under the History section. -D. Wu 23:41, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete not notable Soltak 23:51, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. nn. We do not need articles about every department of every major university. ManoaChild 00:21, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete; non-notable. Jaxl | talk 00:59, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete nn. -Splash 01:21, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Any police department is notable. -- Necrothesp 02:10, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge with University of Washington or Keep. Vegaswikian 05:39, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep Merging isn't a good idea, the main article is already large. This is a totally valid and useful independent topic. SchmuckyTheCat 17:44, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep - a real police department. Trollderella 01:54, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.